Bob Hunter commentary: Jackets are formidable playoff team

The New York Rangers locked up the No. 2 seed in the Metropolitan Division last night, meaning the Blue Jackets can finish no higher than third in the division. If they do finish third, they would face the Rangers in the first round, with New York having home-ice advantage. If not, they would play Boston or Pittsburgh as one of the Eastern Conference’s two wild cards.

When the NHL landed in Columbus in 2000, most of us probably saw the path to success as a straight line.

The Blue Jackets would finish near the bottom of the standings for a few years, get rewarded with high draft picks and grab some amazing prospects. The prospects would gradually grow into stars, and the team would grow with them, making the playoffs five or six years in.

Although there was no telling when the Jackets would become Stanley Cup contenders, we thought it would happen one day. When bad teams are rewarded with high draft picks, it means they are almost mandated to get better. And it wouldn’t be long before teams such as Dallas, Colorado and Detroit, who were dominant when Columbus entered the league, would be dragged down by poor draft status.

It was this mistaken notion that former team president Doug MacLean fed us when he said he wouldn’t trade his entire roster for the Red Wings’, a remark that was ridiculed every time the Wings were on their way to the playoffs and the Jackets were on their way to the golf course.

It was a dumb thing to say, especially when the Red Wings were world-beaters and the Blue Jackets were a third-world franchise, but it made sense to those who still saw the Cup sitting there at the end of a straight path. The course was the same. The trip would just take longer.

I thought about this Wednesday when the Blue Jackets were defeating the Dallas Stars 3-1 to qualify for the playoffs for just the second time — a zigzag path if there ever was one.

We have long forgotten that Dallas was once one of the world-beaters that Columbus aspired to pass, or that the guy who coached the Stars to the Stanley Cup then — Ken Hitchcock — later coached the Blue Jackets to their first playoff appearance.

The hockey world we are living in now seems much more complex than the old one. The new world feeds us a steady diet of reality instead of fantasy, and although reality is an acquired taste for fans with a sweet tooth for fantasy, it still can be savored and enjoyed.

To those who remember the early fantasies, this felt like a successful season even before Wednesday. This playoff appearance seems less a fluke than 2009 or even last season, when the Blue Jackets missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker. Both of those seasons seemed like the product of spectacular goaltending, which can create the illusion of a good team. Even with excellent goaltending, these Jackets look more like a good team and less like an illusion.

The Blue Jackets who were once so ripe for ridicule are dead. If this team isn’t spectacular, it is solid and can be difficult to play against. It has a budding star in Ryan Johansen and a few more players who soon could be stars.

In this different world, the Blue Jackets defeat the Red Wings more often than they lose to them. They defeated other good teams — Phoenix and Dallas — in a desperate quest for a playoff spot, and it isn’t surprising. They win a lot of faceoffs, score a lot of goals and bounce back from devastating losses with a remarkable resilience.

They could end up facing Boston or Pittsburgh in the first round and lose. But an upset isn’t unfathomable. In this new world, the Blue Jackets are a formidable, playoff-worthy team and not just plucky overachievers who suspect they don’t belong.

Although that might not seem as much compared with 10-year-old fantasies, there is a weight and substance to it that is reassuring.

To those who gamely hung on through the unexpected zigzags, bland reality probably tastes as sweet as cotton candy.

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